Microbial conversion of bioderived feedstocks to commercially valuable chemicals offers the potential for lower cost routes to these products. Some of the chemicals that are useful include nylon intermediates such as caprolactam, adipic acid, 1,6-hexamethylene diamine; butanediols such as 1,4-butanediol, 1,3-butanediol, and 2,3-butanediol; butanols such as 1-butanol, and 2-butanol; succinic acid, butadiene, isoprene, and 3-hydroxypropanoic acid.
Most microbial processes rely on carbohydrates (such as sucrose or glucose) as the preferred feedstock. It is more advantageous to utilise alternative lower cost feedstocks such as glycerol, syngas or fatty acids. Glycerol is a by-product of biodiesel production and it can be a low cost feedstock as the production of biodiesel increases. In microbial processes utilizing glycerol as a feedstock, a natural organism such as a bacterium, Escherichia coli, or Clostridium sp and the like or a fungus, Candida sp, or Yarrowia lipolytica, or Aspergillus sp with a natural ability to metabolise glycerol is genetically modified to incorporate the required pathway to desired product.
Utilizing a host organism that naturally metabolise glycerol limits the ability to optimize the overall commercial efficiency of the production of the desired products as these host organisms may not be ideal hosts for the defined pathway to produce the product.
Accordingly, against this background, it is clear that there is a need for a method to produce chemicals or intermediates utilizing an organism which is genetically modified to impart or improve its metabolism of glycerol and its ability to produce a desired product through a metabolic pathway from glycerol.